Preparing for winter in the Gardens

On a sunny day the colours in the garden are still fantastic – the last of the dahlias and rudbeckias and these wonderful hawthorns, ‘Carrierei’, which are laden with berries. The blackbirds will make short work of them when the temperatures drop and the worms head deeper underground.

With days getting shorter and the first frosts arriving we are preparing beds for winter and making the most of our last opportunity to do some planting before the ground gets too cold and the plants just want to hunker down and become dormant until spring. We’re also adding tulips, iris, scillas and crocus to the borders for some early spring colour and rows of bulbs are going into the cutting garden. The tough job of clearing reeds and rushes from the Wild Pond is now rewarding us with beautiful reflections in the cleared surface.